South African Free Software magazine Tectonic published a preview of KDE 4. Written by AJ Venter of South African distribution OpenLab the article describes how the KDE developers are going to "rewrite the desktop rules with KDE 4" with technologies such as Plasma, Solid and of course Qt 4. The article concludes that "when
KDE4 comes out, it will spell the end of the traditional way of using a computer".

though I am really amazed of how much more popular Ubuntu is as compared to Kubuntu, even though KDE as a Desktop is extremely popular. I guess it is the fact that: first, Ubuntu presents an extremely well integrated Gnome desktop. Second: Kubuntu is a more recent project, and it is still lagging behind as a project (Despite Mark S's commitment to Kubuntu as a first class citizen).

Simple. The overall project is "Ubuntu" to most people, so that's the one that gets talked about. To fix it, Ubuntu should NOT be GNOME, but rather, the overall project, with Gubuntu and Kubuntu as sub-species.

The recent announcement that KDE should become an equal alternative to GNOME in (K)Ubuntu seems to show that this was an oversight, probably due to shuttleworth's earlier unfamiliarity with KDE. The least they could do is try to redress the balance and allow free and equal choice by users of which desktop they go with. I'd be surprised if that ever happens, though :(

While the magazine seems professionally made, and I'm grateful that they did a feature story on KDE 4, I can't help but cringe at their attack on version 3 of the GPL and Free Software in general. In the opinion piece on page 7, this magazine falsely quotes Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen as saying that "making money from software is a a great evil". This is definitely NOT the Free Software Foundation's opinion at all -- in fact, Richard Stallman wrote an essay explaining why selling Free & Open Source is perfectly OK and even encouraged!

The opinion paper also fails to mention the dangers of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), also known as Treacherous Computing and Handcuffware. The reason we need the anti-DRM provisions in GPLv3 is to make sure the user controls his/her computer, not some unscrupulous corporation (remember the Sony Rootkit: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/13/1419206)

I'm willing to give the magazine the benefit of the doubt and say that opinion piece is pure sarcasm. But they better stop spreading this FUD, because someone who doesn't know better might actually believe it.

Some people are honoring Lenin as leader of an revolution. And this magazine is using his picture as reference to an revolution for it's audience. Audience starting with free software is often the poor, young and empowering part of peoples. They take [free|opensource|non profit] software as cultural gift from firstworld's part of mankind.

Acknowledging magazines' failures related to GPL and giving some hints for better PR, you're well done with informing about European history in the 1st quarter of 20th century.

"I'm willing to give the magazine the benefit of the doubt and say that opinion piece is pure sarcasm."

Duh - well spotted. The entire article is pure sarcasm from beginning to end. Here are some of the not-so-subtle hints that I, the author, was being sarcastic when I wrote this:

"Awake Comrades!"
"Comrade Stallman..."
"Your humble narrator need hardly remind you of the Great Evil of trying to make money from software."
"The Great Leap Forward of '89"
"Our great forerunners Lenin and Marx..."
"Your compulsory weekly education classes..."

And so on and so on. If you're stupid enough to even think that this is something other than an obvious parody of typical Communist literature, that's not my problem.

Asserting false statements about the GPL and Free Software, even as a joke, can be very detrimental to its public image (and to the image of the magazine, for that matter). Remember, Microsoft has packs of lawyers/propagandists ready to pick up on any misconception and use it to smear KDE, Linux and other Open Source projects. They have done it in the past (see Ballmers statement), and theyll do it again.

It is counterproductive to scare businesses into thinking the GPL has anti-profit clauses, when that is obviously wrong. The GPL is about protecting the users rights to control his/her computer.

Bolshevik communism caused enormous suffering and the deaths of millions of people, so it is no wonder that a significant portion of the world has an allergic reaction to it. Associating bolshevik communism with Free Software will only cause those people to passionately reject Free Software right off the bat.

Associating Free Software with a positive historical force (ie. Martin Luther King Jr. or Ghandi) would be more appropriate. But leave out the sarcasm, since it might be construed as disrespecting the legacies of those historical figures.

A community which has lost the ability to parody itself isn't a particularly attractive community to be a part of. You don't have to like the article, or the particular humor that it's using, but not everything published in the Linux world need be propaganda pieces. Or are you suggesting that we should forgo humor "for the good of the party"? ;-)

Following the rather heated debate on this article, we have published it on our website (http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=914). We believed the article to be quite obviously satirical. Please let us know what you think.

Sorry comrade that a pitiful magazine of the enemy is trying to taint our vision. Rest assured that we will resist, we will fight. Let's forge an E-Jihad against those infidels. How do they dare to insult what is most dear to us?

Don't they know that our diety-inspired GPL is holy to our beliefs? God speaks to us through his and only prophet Stallman, may Allah protect him from these GPL-less infidels.

Yes, we must carry on our plan! Anything that doesn't spit pure propaganda of the GPL and FSF is the enemy! They're either with us or aganist US!

In the spirit of the 3rd coming of the almight GPL, I hereby require all followers to gather and issue an E-Fatwa that will put a definite stop to this heresay!

I think that this arcticle give a better idea of what KDe is about it gives some
examples of what wecan expect and sets the expecationt really high. I also get the impresion that they have a clear roadmap. They already had XGL in plasma. Plus I am no longer afraid that Kde was going to do the rest of the XGL stuff and just copy the effects

I like some of the things I see in KDE 4, but somehow I'm still a little afraid, because the stakes a placed so very high, and ofcourse the expectation are getting higher and higher. I hope it won't be disappointment, like so many part II or III of movies (like Matrix, Starwars).

What would be a nice idee, would be to provide a theme that looks like the GNOME team, disables all configuration options (like GNOME). Don't put it as default, but than everyone can make there own choice... As Default would be nice a 'sane' configuration somewhere between GNOME and KDE 3.5, with nice defaults... But ofcourse the possibility to extend or rape the user experience...

One last thing I hope, is they will separate the konqueror (or how they will call it) from the desktop, I think it is too stupid like windows, one explorer crashes, your whole desktop is gone....

"One last thing I hope, is they will separate the konqueror (or how they will call it) from the desktop"

Konqueror doesn't control the desktop as far as I know. Maybe you mean that if one konqueror (file manager only by default) window crashes, they all dissapear. You can change that in the settings under performance. It will take longer to open a new window though since it will have to start a new process.

>As Default would be nice a 'sane' configuration...., with nice defaults.

The defaults in KDE 3.5 are already both sane and nice, and they "just work" if you want to word it like that. The logic used when people basicly claim that having fewer options somheow makes the default better, are seriously flawed.

>separate the konqueror from the desktop

Are you sure you are not mixing up KDE with Gnome? As I recall they are the one using their filemanager, Nautilus, to draw the desktop.

Lines between menu, toolbars and content (should be disabled). Maximize button directly next to the close button (one or two spaces have to be inserted)

No "keep above" button in the window title bars.

Bad and inconsistent konqueror configurations. konqueror --profile simplebrowser does not harmonize with the other profiles (use simple browser profile, switch to your home directory and try to switch "detailed" icon view)

Yes, and the defaults should be nice and sane for the majority of users, your personall preferences on the other hand may not be. But if you have some settings where a change would make a improvement for the majority of users, mailing a polite and nicely reasoned explanation and argument for why it should change to the developers will have them consider it.

>Lines between menu, toolbars and content (should be disabled).

Personally I prefer the default, depends if your or my personall preference is preffered by the majority:-)

>Maximize button directly next to the close button (one or two spaces have to be inserted)

Defenatly a personall preference of yours, the majority of desktops does it the same way as KDE. But I can agree to it beeing wrong, close should be in the left corner with minimize and maximze in the right corner like the Laptop decoration. A strong personall preference I'd guess, and I'm not sure if it's advisable to base the defaults on it even if it's the most useable and userfriendly approach.

>No "keep above" button in the window title bars.

Your preference again, it's not that widely used and lots of users do never need it. Besides it's quikly avalible in the right click menue and easily added to the window title bar for users with special needs.

Why would the majority of users (or any user) use the simple (web)browser profile to view their home directory in "detailed" icon view?
Besides it's a well known fact that there some nastyness hidden in the Konqueror profile handling, but it does not really affect the default settings and the majority of users. They use the browser profile for browsing the web, and the filemanger profile for managing files.

> Personally I prefer the default, depends if your or my personall preference
> is preffered by the majority:-)

In KDE 3.5.2 "no lines" are default :-)

>Maximize button directly next to the close button (one or two spaces have to
> be inserted)

> Defenatly a personall preference of yours, the majority of desktops does it
> the same way as KDE.

*Every* HID Guide says: Do not put destructive buttons directly next to often used buttons. I don't want to place the close button on the left hand side. I only want some millimeters of space between close and maximize.

> Why would the majority of users (or any user) use the simple (web)browser
> profile to view their home directory in "detailed" icon view?

Maybe you want to access an ftp-server when you are webbrowsing? ftp://ftp.kde.org ...
Maybe you happen to click on the "home" button?
maybe you want to do some copy&paste between ftp.kde.org and a new tab with your download directory?

There is *no* reason to close the webbrowser and start a new filemanager. That's a KOnqueror feature. Unfortunately there is one profile which makes this feature unusable.

I was a little hasty there. XPs Luna theme does, but not the windows classic theme:-)

>*Every* HID Guide says: Do not put destructive buttons directly next to often used buttons.

Can agree to that, but when it comes to window decorations it looks like few cares:-)

>I don't want to place the close button on the left hand side.

What can I say, you should try. When you get used to it you wouldn't want it another way:-). And remember to drop the menu button, it's redundant since a right click on the titlebare gives you the same.

>I only want some millimeters of space between close and maximize.

All windowdecorations in KDE allows for customizing button positions in the titlebar, just open the dialog and drop buttons and spacers the way you want them.

If you really want it as default, open kdebase/kwin/clients/plastik/plastikclient.cpp and change line 66 from 'return "HIAX";' to 'return "HIA_X";' make a patch and send it to the maintainers. Or you can simply try to convince them to do it, as Aron said it's work in progress.

had you said this a month ago, it would've perhaps been insightful. but i beat you to it with a commit that changes this for 3.5.2 =P

what often escapes people is that kde is:

a work in progress -> we don't starve you for 3-5 years for a new release and then hope we "got it right" and you're stuck with that for better or worse. we release constant incremental changes. those changes are usually improvements, but sometimes they are not. the progress over time, however, is a very compelling march towards perfection. now, perfection is an unachievable but we can move towards it.

a toolkit upon which others build -> you may note that virtually every distribution modifies in some way the window decorations. suse puts a space between the close and maximize buttons, for instance.

> No "keep above" button in the window title bars

why should this be on by default?!

> konqueror --profile simplebrowser does not harmonize with the other profiles

i agree this profile could be even better. but it's another -optional- profile. as such it will be -different-. that's sort of the point. it's a little odd to complain that configuration possibilities result in making things different.

As usuall it's simply a case of the developers to know/care/agree or any combination thereof, and the changes come. As opposed to this example the developers sometimes need feedback to keep the work in progress improving, so help them by interacting:-)

As stated above, I kind of like the old way. Is it still possible to keep the old behavior or do I have to learn to live with the new way?

Regardless, I kind of like your mission of removing unnecessary lines:-) Way to go Aron. Any chance of getting rid of the 3 pixel line between the statusbar and windowdecoration border in Konqueror?

> had you said this a month ago, it would've perhaps been insightful.
> but i beat you to it with a commit that changes this for 3.5.2 =P

I'm bet that most users won't see your change because everyone already has "show lines = true" in its config files and updated RPMs normally don't change the local configuration files of the users.

I think it would make sense if KDE would more often discard outdated local configuration files because manual changes applied to them often make no sense anymore. (That's a general issue. Of course it does not apply for KDE 3.5.1 -> 3.5.2)

>> No "keep above" button in the window title bars
>
> why should this be on by default?!

Why not? Put it in your window title bar (on the left side) and you will soon miss it if it is not there. It's very useful when watching TV, having one editor on top of the other windows,... (yes, you can do a right click, but a button is much more convient).
Only because MS Windows does not support "keep above" does not mean KWIN should hide this useful feature. :-)

> i agree this profile could be even better. but it's another -optional-
> profile. as such it will be -different-. that's sort of the point.
> it's a little odd to complain that configuration possibilities result
> in making things different.

That's not my point. When using the normal Webbrowsing profile Konqueror switches (?) tho the normal file manager profile when accessing local files or FTP-Servers. konqueror --profile simplebrowser looses the funktionality to switch between FTP/local usage and webbrowsing.

Additionally you can't open the "simplebrowser" profile from within konqueror. Or more exactly: You can, but it looks differently to "konqueror --prof...".

I agree with this, I've NEVER EVER had gstreamer actually work on my system, it craps out constantly and is just a total pain. Phono will allow the people that want to use gstreamer to use gstreamer, and the people like probably the majority of users that don't want to have gstreamer anywhere near their desktop will be able to use one of the others (like xine).

Choice is good. Keep them all, except those that get badly outdated and unmaintained (3+ years).

> - Kate, Kwrite, Kedit. One has to go.

Same as above: choice is good.

> - a single good recording software, something like Audacity. The current software is bullshit.

Yes (but why "single"?), and also video editing. There was a nice effort in the form of Kdenlive, but their last version is from two years ago. KDE should be able to do about 10 times better than crappy Kino.

> - Gstreamer as the default framework

When I am given a choice between way too bad and far too bad, I routinely refuse to make the choice. In this case this would mean developing a very simple KDEMM backend that would meet only the most basic requirements for audio playback, and making it the default. If the user wants to switch to gst, it will then be their choice, not KDE's.

Besides, is there *really* nothing better than Gstreamer or Arts? We should look really hard, there *must* be something better, I just can't believe things can be that bad in year 2006.

As for KDEnlive, have a look at kdenlive.sf.net. It seems to be being resurrected, and looks quite good at the moment. Transitions, effects, titles, etc. All that is really needed is more stability and rendering...

My understanding is that kedit is just hanging around because it's able to do bidirectional text and kwrite/kate can't. Once kwrite/kate can it would be able to go the way of the dodo. As for kate and kwrite, they both serve very different userbases.

yes. it's a concept that actually works very well for most people. note that every desktop environment has one? that in itself isn't enough of a justification of course, but it does cause one to paus eand ask, "why?" in this case the answer is "because it works"

> Or should configuration accesed via the browwser

not without fundamentally changing the browser. otherwise the access to the settings gets fairly lost (so the browser would have to become -the- place people go to start everything and expose the various start points effectively and transparently, which just doesn't work very well in practice); and the browser concept makes getting to settings harder than even our current annoying control center =)

> oKular sounds promising

well, oKular -is- kpdf really. and yes, it does sound promising. if it delivers perhaps we won't need other apps. we'll see.

> Kate, Kwrite, Kedit. One has to go

ah, my favourite old saw. perhaps if kate actually became a good lightweight code editor we could drop kwrite. personally, i'm impressed with where kate went in 3.5 (away from being a mini-ide and towards "simply" being a code editor), so who knows.

kedit is completely different, so lumping it in is pretty silly =)

> a single good recording software, something like Audacity.
> The current software is bullshit.

agreed. who's going to write it? because that's how open source works. we don't mandate "someone write a non-bullshit recording package. now!!!!!!" and *poof* it appears. rather someone, such as yourself, says to themselves, "wow. all this recording software is bullshit. let's make something non-bullshit." and -then- it appears.

> Gstreamer as the default framework

and possibly end up where we are with aRts in 6 years time? no thanks. remember that aRts was the gstreamer of its day. phonon makes so much more sense here: abstract it away and we get portability and future proofing. now system integrators can decide. or better: you can! you like gstreamer? go for it.

to be honest, i've yet to use gstreamer and be satisfied. it does a lot of things right, and hopefully that will continue and one day it will be as awesome as it promises to be. but it's neither stable nor fast in my experience. for playing media, i've had much better experience with xine.

with phonon, all that hardly matters. ah, much better!

> Get Knights into KDegames

again, this isn't how it works. the Knights maintainer/developers need to want to be included in KDE and start the process. we don't just suck in people's software like passing alien invaders hovering over farm houses ;)

My question is, we know Phonon is going to be an abstraction but that doesn't mean some one have to write pluggins for arts, GStreamer, Xine, etc. to be used with Phonon and what is going to be the default plugging? I mean, in witch one KDE developers will spend more concentration? i doubd you can do the same for all so please, tell us witch one?

>what is going to be the default plugging?
>I mean, in witch one KDE developers will spend more concentration?
>i doubd you can do the same for all so please, tell us witch one?

I guess the answer should be something like the most stable and best suited one:-) But seriously it's to early to tell, pick the one best suited to your usage and help out with bugreports.

The choices as I see them are, for the ones looking for performance or low resource usage aKode/Xine. For advanced and network capabilities, NMM. For those wanting to use Gnome multimedia applications GStreamer(everything else Gnome still uses ESD, so additional solutions are needed for that).

> What would be a nice idee, would be to provide a theme that looks like the
> GNOME team, disables all configuration options (like GNOME).

personally i think we're best leaving that trick to GNOME, to be honest. they can pander to that segment of the market and do a good job of it while we pander to the rest of the market who either want or requires flexibility (and do a good job of that)

the technical and manpower overhead vs actual benefits of such an ability to hide all config options is almost certainly not worth the returns. the effect on documentation, support and bug counts would be non-negligible.

ok, don't let this become a kde gnome thing. This is about what KDE 4 is about. I think the ideas and the goals are there, no we just need the actual implementation. By the way does since plasma has xgl does that mean that they are rewritting X also?

it was a cool article and generally nice. a few inaccuracies crept it, but that's hard to avoid when commenting on a moving target like kde4 at this point in its development.

for instance, Qt4 does not have support for C# and while we are watching XGL we haven't written any XGL-specific code in plasma yet.

generally a good read and, as you noted, no we are not simply going to copy the effects in XGL. right now XGL is an interesting demo but has next to no positive impact for actual users trying to get actual productivity done.